Koban (79 page)

“Good point,” Maggi agreed. “I’ve never heard him or any translator
describe humans as
new
prey before, just as prey or animals. This is coming
right on the heels of the first good human combat showing against them. It sounds
like something important is being discussed at this clan leader meeting.”

Noreen was uncomfortable with her new authority, but needed
to take the helm. “Well, we all have an early morning. I plan to be up an hour before
dawn if anyone wants to have breakfast with Dillon and me at sunrise. Thad you’re
welcome to grab an empty room here. Ask our friend to find one for you.”

“Thanks, I’ll do that. G‘night, and I’ll see you at breakfast.”

After that they all split up, exhausted from the stress and
tragedy of the day.

****

At five thirty, Jake sent Noreen a wakeup call, and sharing the
bed with Dillon, she shook him gently awake. With a kiss, she jumped into the shower
as Dillon dressed. Then they made it to their usual dinning nook, where they found
Thad already there with an order of simulated eggs, bacon, and coffee. Maggi and
Willfem joined them shortly, and the rest of the dining room had many more people
than usual for such an early hour. Apparently, a lot of people were going out this
morning to help retrieve Mirikami’s body.

Despite the risk of wolfbats and skeeters, more people wanted
to go than the shuttle could carry in a half dozen trips. Jorl’sn was preflight
checking it now, and had loaded some tools and a few small explosive packets they
might need for larger blockages.

Five or six trucks and halftracks were being readied for a slower
trip, with eight people per truck. Deanna and the other three survivors from Mirikami’s
team were driving four of them. Forty to fifty people so far had asked to go along.

Thad wondered if they knew how congested that twenty-foot wide
terrace was going to get. Not to mention that those in the trucks would have to
make the risky one hundred foot climb up to the lower terrace.

When the shuttle left, five trucks were already three miles out,
in convoy, with a sixth still loading. The flight out was somber and quiet. No one
looked forward to this task. The video of Mirikami’s final moments left no doubt
of the condition of his body, even before the explosion brought down the cave roof
on him and the Krall. The infrared camera had penetrated the shadows enough to see
him firing out, and the impacts as the Krall’s bullets struck home in his chest
armor, mere seconds before the explosion had obliterated the cave’s entrance.

Roni landed far enough away that her thruster exhaust would be
well clear of the workers and the closest climbing route when the trucks arrived.

Walking towards the cave, they could see four wolfbats fluttering
around the rock slab, nervously looking their way to see if they had guns drawn.
When Thad drew one of his pistols, they all scattered in a rapid flapping of leathery
teal wings.

As they drew near, they could see that the Krall’s legs, even
the bones, were completely gone, and animals had been trying to dig under the large
rock slab to get at the remains of the corpse still pinned beneath.

They stood back to permit Dillon to start the excavation effort.
He banged way at the rock slab with a pickax a dozen times, removing only small
chips with each swing. It was obvious that method was going to take far too long,
and the pry bars they brought couldn’t budge a several ton slab.

Next, they placed the small explosives they brought between the
slab’s top and the cliff face, but realized they had underestimated the weight of
what they needed to move. They wanted to blow it away from the rock face; possibly
even over the terrace edge, but the small amount of plastic explosive didn’t seem
adequate to the task.

Soon nearly a dozen people had climbed up, having parked the
trucks a couple of hundred feet away from below the work area. Bob Campbell and
Neri Bar were among them, and they had brought more plastic explosives. It was decided
that those, combined with the smaller charges would be more than enough to kick
the slab over the edge and out of their way. They placed the explosives in four
places, with detonators wired together, and a single remote actuator.

Warning everyone away, the entire group moved beyond where the
shuttle had landed, to make sure no rock fragments would hit anyone. Bob handed
Dillon the transmitter for the actuator, granting him the privilege of removing
the largest obstacle.

He hesitated. “I hate to do more damage to his body. It can’t
be an open casket type service anyway after what happened, and his final requests
said he wanted cremation. But this size of a blast might not leave much of anything
to cremate.”

“Dillon,” Maggi spoke softly, “He’s beyond pain or suffering.
This is only the shell of who he was.”

“Go ahead,” urged Noreen. “We need to bring him back, to complete
our grieving and to move on, to continue what he started.”

With a sigh, Dillon armed the trigger and pressed the button.
The blast was even stronger than they had expected, and the rock slab went spinning
off over the ledge to crash with a heavy thud a hundred feet below. More rock rained
down from over the cave entrance, but they were smaller pieces, and would be easy
to remove. They waited several minutes to make sure the patter of rocks had ended.

Dillon was the first to walk back through the billowing dust,
the others hanging back to give him a brief moment alone with the Captain’s remains.
He stepped over the Krall’s crushed torso, and saw the shattered remains of Mirikami’s
armor under the loose rocks. The helmet, its faceplate still unbroken and mercifully
closed, concealed his friend’s final expression.

He settled to one knee, and spotted the shattered pistol the
Krall had shot from Mirikami’s hand. Dillon stared at its handle. He heard someone
come up behind him. He glanced around and saw it was Maggi, with Noreen close behind.

“He went down fighting,” Maggi said.

“He fought exactly the way he thinks, smart but tricky.” He lifted
something from under the gun butt, running into the darkness. It was the lanyard
from Mirikami’s claymore.

From the dark recess of the cave came “If you’re through trying
to blow my ass off, can I get something to eat and drink?”

With a whoop, Dillon charged into the cave, only to emerge a
moment later carrying Mirikami, dressed only in his brown and tan body suit. The
Captain was yelling at him to be careful of his leg.

Maggi stared in open mouth amazement at him, cradled there in
Dillon’s muscular arms like a child.

Mirikami looked down at her, satisfied. “It’s worth raging thirst
and a broken leg to see you struck dumb.” He chuckled as she blinked away tears,
finally finding her voice.

“I’ll break your damned neck if you ever do this to us again.”
She threatened as she wiped her tears.

Noreen was so overjoyed she rushed to hug Mirikami in a
tearful embrace, as Dillon set him down on a nearby flat-topped rock. Tears and
laughter were flowing equally free.

Thad had heard Dillon’s first shout, and had drawn his pistol
and arrived at a run, just as the big man stepped into the light with the Captain
in his arms. Holstering his weapon, he laughed and clapped Mirikami and Dillon each
on the back, a silly grin plastered on his face.

Thad called back to the couple of dozen people that had stayed
back by the shuttle out of respect for privacy, then out of concern when they heard
Dillon yell and saw Greeves draw a gun and start running.

Thad’s words finally made sense when they saw Dillon set Mirikami
down. The excitement and cheers spread. Jorl’sn radioed back to the ship with the
good news.

Handing over a fistful of protein bars, Dillon asked how he had
rigged his gun, where had he gotten the explosive, how far back in the cave had
he been. Mirikami held up his hand to still the questions.

“I’m famished and thirsty, so give me some water and a few minutes
to eat these bars. Could you please bring me the first aid kit from the shuttle?
I don’t know if my leg is broken, but a big chunk of rock fell on it when I brought
the roof down yesterday.”

He practically needed a cordon to hold back the congratulations
and back slappers as he refueled his new metabolism. Finally, knowing he’d have
to explain this several more times before the day was done, he told them what happened.

“I removed my armor for two reasons. I brought a flat sheet of
plastic explosive with me, taped to my chest, which I needed to remove. Then I decided
to use the suit as a decoy to get the Krall to charge that if my claymore
missed him. I tied one of my pistols to the right hand of the armor, and piled rocks
to hold it pointed out of the cave. I tied the claymore lanyard to the spring loaded
trigger, running it behind the suit so I could pull it from back inside the cave.
I used some of the climbing rope to tie to a mechanical detonator trigger for the
plastic explosive I planted in the cave roof.

“I tried to kill the warrior with the claymore at the next cave
down, but it was too suspicious of our traps by then, and was about to figure out
I wasn’t hiding inside the shit cave. Forgive me Dillon,
your
shit cave.”
He laughed with Dillon and the others at the reference.

“I remotely fired the claymore while lying in hiding on the ledge,
behind this rock in fact. I missed him. I jumped up and dove into the cave while
shooting at him. I think I actually hit him once. Then I crawled back in the cave
and started repeatedly pulling the lanyard to shoot out of the cave mouth. He fired
continuously back at the source and probably demolished my armor, thinking it was
me.

“By that time I was around a bend where I couldn’t see the entrance,
so I used the Katusha,” he patted the device slung from his ammo belt. “I aimed
it at the front entrance through the rock to gauge when he was coming inside.

“When the little light brightened, I waited a second then pulled
the climbing rope to detonate the explosives in the ceiling. I guess I wasn’t far
enough back, and a piece of rock either ricocheted back to hit me or fell from the
roof. It may have fractured my right leg. It was instantly dark so I couldn’t see
a thing without my helmet light, and I nearly choked on the dust until I pulled
up the Smart Fabric to breathe through. I think I lay stunned for some time from
the overpressure.

“When I regained my senses, I heard noise at the front and thought
it was the same or another Krall trying to get to me. The Katusha only indicated
one. I crawled farther back inside and waited in the dark with my pistol. Eventually
I slept.

“This morning I heard sounds outside and the Katusha showed there
were a lot of individuals out there. I crawled a bit closer to the front in the
dark, ready to call out when you scared the crap out of me with that big explosion.
The outside was bright, and Dillon was blindingly backlit before I could finally
see it was a human coming and not a Krall. I decided not to shoot him, despite the
painful ringing in my ears. I called to him, he found me, he carried me out. End
of story.”

Deanna gave him her first big hug. “Tet, you have no idea how
much your survival will mean to the already deliriously happy people back at the
dome.” She gave him her second hug, but wrinkling her nose this time.

Mirikami saw the reaction and said, “I’m rather tickled about
it myself, but we’ll all enjoy these warm and fuzzy hugs more once I get this foul
smelling suit off and I’m clean again. I’d stay out of that cave for a few days.
We need to stock these with paper; this is another shit cave I’m afraid.”

Thad laughed with the others, but injected a serious note. “I’m
wondering if we will need to go back in there anytime soon, for a hunt I mean. Last
night Telour sounded like the agreement was over, and he was leaving today.

“Really? What did he say?”

Noreen told him of the brief conversation the night before.

Mirikami, back to thinking form with protein bars in his
stomach, pulled at his lip. “So he called it an old agreement with new prey.
That does sound like something is about to change, and with our status. I
wonder why?”

 He continued, “As ruthless as Telour is, he considers
agreements, even with prey animals, a matter of his and his clan’s honor. He
wouldn’t abrogate an agreement easily, unless the debt of honor had been met.”

“What would pay off that debt?’ Thad asked.

“Exactly the right question. He offered me and those I selected
immunity. Provided we helped him demonstrate that humans were capable of fighting
back more effectively. Killing three Krall...” he was interrupted.

Thad told him “Five warriors died. At least only three came back.”

“OK,
five
dead Krall. That is certainly a
much
higher rate than I expected. How many people did we lose?”

“Eight all told. The three in the swamp, four in the canyon,
and the one in the jungle was virtually a suicide to try and take a warrior with
him,” Answered Deanna.

“Well this was a huge day for us captives, but they certainly
won’t fall for so many tricks the next time around,” Tet predicted. He gave an
example.

“The octet leader would not directly approach the cave entrance
where I had aimed my last claymore, and he started shooting from off to the
side. He spotted where I had hidden the claymore. I triggered it just to give myself
a chance to duck into the cave, counting on that distraction to save my butt.”

Noreen cut the story time off. “Let’s get you back to the ship
for a proper shower and a real meal.”

“Aye Aye, Mam,” he answered.

“Don’t give me that. I was scared to death I’d have to try and
fill your shoes by dealing with Telour.”

They carried Mirikami on a makeshift litter to the shuttle, and
flew him back to the ship.